I don’t remember when the voices started.

But I do know they weren’t always there. I do remember a time when I ran and ran, chasing seagulls at the sunny beach vibrant with the light of youth with breath in the air and joy in the waves and toes of innocence tapping up mini sand storms. And truth be told, past is the only thing that really lasts in comparison to future and present that either are unknown or pass over the ears of the unfocused mind.

That girl lived for G-d and water and air and smiles.

But with knives and pain and tweezers and fame, the voices slowly creeped in, the ones that scream and seethe and pretend to have always been there. Sometimes they brave my very own heart and make me want things my heart never agreed to.

Like the bottle filled with pills and numbness and freedom sitting silently on the side of the counter. I try to think of running and seagulls and waves and toes but no such luck. I try to think of pasts and futures and present but no such luck. I try to think but no such luck.

I don’t even know how they end up in my hand in my mouth through my teeth down my throat but there they are, I can feel them like treasures in the back of my throat and in my sensitive stomach. There are no tears in my eyes but something in me cries like never before because that small part of me is terrified from what I’ve done. I swallow some more because once it’s over, let it be over. But no such luck. Dad is downstairs. It’s midnight and he sees me and he cries out and he snaps his phone out and I’m gone, gone in my thoughts again for who can watch a father grieve? He takes my hand tightly and I can’t be sure if its from love or fear. He leads me toward the couch and I can no longer see and I’m not a person anymore and my hands begin to tremble violently and then I’m crying with years of tears and muck.

Then mom is here and I’m dying and there’s nothing anyone can do but wait. The ambulance arrives and the paramedic asks me why why why why I did it.

Why why why? You want to know why?

Scrape every branch against your skin till it slits your flesh and cuts your heart and pour the salt and watch the blood run like fire. Take the blood and never leave and tell your mind to shut up and tell the blood to dry so you can be human again but no such luck. Drown in rivers and tell your day you’ll be there tomorrow and feel the baggage of every girl you pass in the streets. Hear the voices in your head curling inside with freaking ease calling you idiot and stupid and fat and unworthy and unlovable. Scream till your lungs burn then throw the chair at every mouth that ever hurt you but no, there are too many.

Why? Why?

I tell him I want a break. He tells me I need a hospital. I believe him and follow his instructions and get up but I fall so mommy takes my trembling body into her warm hands and carries me all the way outside and into the back of the ambulance. All the while she whispers to me something about sand and water and little girls who loved life. it’s a long, long, dizzying way.

The paramedic straps me in and wraps a blanket around my shoulders and asks me how I’m feeling. I say I’m drowning and that I still want my break. He says I’ll be ok. I say I don’t want to be ok. Mommy cries. Dad holds her and my heart cracks into yet another little fragment of a person I once was. Dad sticks some earbuds in my ears and turns on Alex Warren. Thank you, Alex Warren, for having pain in your life so I can listen to your slow heart-wrenching songs. I flow into the music and stick my head above the water so I can breathe again. It’s a bumpy ride and I shake the entire way through.

“You’ll be alright, kid” Alex says. I believe him and quiet down and I say I want a break. But no such luck. Here I am being saved. We get to the hospital. Mom hands me my teddy. They say I’m not allowed to have it. Mom takes it back. They wheel me out.

The ER is not at all how I imagined it. It’s small and it smells and it’s filled with hungry broken people. I’m not able to get up so they lift me and transfer me onto the bed from the stretcher. The ER bed is more uncomfortable than my mind expected. The kind nurses tell me I’ll be ok, hook me onto an EKG monitor with a bunch of stickers and wires and make me drink charcoal. It tastes so bad, I manage two sips before I gag and they’re forced to stick a tube up my nose and send the charcoal straight down to my stomach. I tell the nurse I want a break. she tells me to try and get some sleep. I’ll feel better really soon. That’s when I remember it’s midnight. They don’t let me have my phone like I can kill myself through the internet. They make me change into paper clothes that itch against my skin. They make me drink. They make me pee. They measure it.

They forget that I have human dignity and turn me a into a hunk of danger to myself and others. I plead for my phone out of boredom but no such luck. It takes a day or two or five hundred of movies and room sitters and vitals for them to transfer me to the psych ward. They move me down hallways in a chair, the only sound being the rocking of the wheels and the thunderous taps of the security guard’s boots. Mom and dad walk behind me and I can only imagine their faces in my vivid mind’s eye.

Who knows what a daughter is? A daughter sick in her sick, sick mind full of worms and knives and inner blood that never bleeds out in the sun so no one will hear her thunderous cries for help. And then we arrive.

It’s not very big. Just a maze of three or four hallways that bounce off the ground in haphazard dizziness. In every corner lies silent stories that echo of pain and hatred and anger and little girls that vanished in the wind of time and aggression. On the ground stick grippy sock messily dressing the toes of swollen people. Swollen with every single thing ever kept inside until it all exploded with lava and relish leaving them deflated and empty and with scars from tomorrow and a million years before. Heavy chairs so we can’t throw them. Fake mirrors so we can’t break them. Magnets on the bathroom doors. No lock on the showers. Bricks on the heart so we can’t break them all over again. Restraints on emotions so we can’t lose control. Water everywhere with no sand to stand and breathe on.

I plead to go home but no such luck. They tell me I’ll be ok. That I’ll get a break here. they show me to my room. They tell me I’m having a roommate. Somone wrote on the wall “Dave was here” lots of others followed. Silent testimony to all the sadness a world can hold.

Welcome to the psych ward.

They wake us for vitals at 6:30 AM. Theres a girl in the bed beside me. The nurse calls her Lola and tells us good morning. We answer good morning because we both are good girls who are perfectly sane and can go home. She does bloodwork on both of us sucking on our blood like we haven’t bled enough yet. When she sticks the needle into Lola’s vein, Lola says “You said a little pinch.” I laugh. She smiles at me. We take turns pacing and talking. She says she took some pills. I say I did too. She says her thought she was dead. I say my dad woke up midnight and found me. She says her mom also didn’t believe her that she took those pills. I say I was crying.

We have breakfast. I sit near Lola and Lola sits near me. We eat a bit of pancake till we decide were not hungry at all and hand our trays in without getting angry or throwing furniture like they expect us to. We have a DBT group with a social worker that looks trams but isn’t. we walk together in our sweat pants and sweaters they allow us to wear with no strings or sequence or anything that can tempt us to be bad, bad children and hurt ourselves to the music therapy room. The music therapist is a sweet young lady who has long hair and plays guitar and makes us write a song about us being light and us being worthy. The boy across from me says “We are not effected by the labels others put upon us” or something like that. I wonder what his story is. I wish I can tell him mine.

We go to school. School is a small room with a few heavy desks and a teacher who speaks like he never went through puberty and stayed in the bliss of a forgotten childhood. I close my mind and shut my eyes and tamper with my heart till it’s shut too. An hour later is check. How do you feel? Good… kind of. Calm. Distressed. Sad. Angry. What’s your goal? To have fun. To not get angry. To get out of here. to never come back. To draw. To finish my book. To get a break. A hundred different answers from a million different voices. But when I look around, we’re only a dozen and a half of us sitting around.

I eat lunch with Lola. We have art therapy where we write slogans with the paper cuts we can finally make ourselves and measure our words and color with something not sharp and. We die in our papers and live in our breed will we’re drunk with life and die all over again. We go to the school room again, another hour of zoning out and treating life as all but what it truly is. We eat dinner. Check in. How do you feel? Did you achieve your goal? Quiet time. Group. Snack. Games. cursing. Go to your room. More cursing. Vitals. Go to sleep. Wake up. Repeat the cycle. Don’t scream. Don’t lose control. Don’t get restrained. Focus on recovery. Get home. Get home. Don’t be stupid. Wipe the blood and sew the wound and never ever feel.

This is the psych ward. This is the corner of the world where hearts are free but broken. Where 16-year-olds show teacher the nice picture that they drew. Where everyone loves everyone only because of their pain. Where every wall is engraved with names of forever and pain and anger and hatred and so many stories. This is the psych ward.

I skipped out the body check on purpose.